MR. HERBERT'S NEW BOOKS.—The Southern Quarterly Review for July has the following notice of "Frank Forester's Fish and Fishing in the United States and British Provinces," recently published by Stringer & Townsend:
"There are few of our writers so variously endowed and accomplished as Mr. Herbert; of a mind easily warmed and singularly enthusiastic, the natural bent of his talent inclines him to romance. He has accordingly given us several stories abounding in stately scenes, and most impressive portraiture. Well skilled in the use of the mother tongue, as in the broad fields of classical literature, he has written essays of marked eloquence, and criticisms of excellent discrimination and a keen and thorough insight. His contributions to our periodicals have been even more happy than his fictions. With a fine imagination, he inherits a penchant and a capacity for poetry, which has enabled him to throw off, without an effort, some of the most graceful fugitive effusions which have been written in America. His accomplishments are as various as his talents. He can paint a landscape as sweetly as he can describe it in words. He is a sportsman of eager impulse, and relishes equally well the employments of the fisherman and hunter. He is a naturalist, as well as a sportsman, and brings, to aid his practice and experience, a large knowledge, from study, of the habits of birds, beasts and fishes. He roves land and sea in this pursuit, forest and river, and turns, with equal ease and readiness, from a close examination of Greek and Roman literature, to an emulous exercise of all the arts which have afforded renown to the aboriginal hunter. The volume before us—one of many which he has given to this subject—is one of singular interest to the lover of the rod and angle. It exhibits, on every page, a large personal knowledge of the finny tribes in all the northern portions of our country, and well deserves the examination of those who enjoy such pursuits and pastimes. The author's pencil has happily illustrated the labors of his pen. His portraits of the several fishes of the United States are exquisitely well done and truthful. It is our hope, in future pages, to furnish an ample review of this, and other interesting volumes, of similar character, from the hand of our author. We have drawn to them the attention of some rarely endowed persons of our own region, who, like our author, unite the qualities of the writer and the sportsman; from whom we look to learn in what respects the habits and characters of northern fish differ from our own, and thus supply the deficiency of the work before us. The title of this work is rather too general. The author's knowledge of the fish, and of fishing, in the United States, is almost wholly confined to the regions north of the Chesapeake, and he falls into the error, quite too common to the North, of supposing this region to be the whole country. Another each volume as that before us will be necessary to do justice to the Southern States, whose possessions, in the finny tribes of sea and river, are of a sort to shame into comparative insignificance all the boasted treasures of the North. It would need but few pages in our review, from the proper hands, to render this very apparent to the reader. Meanwhile, we exhort him to seek the book of Mr. Herbert, as a work of much interest and authority, so far as it goes."
MR. PUTNAM is preparing some elegantly embellished works for the holiday season. Among others, an edition, in octavo, of Miss Fenimore Cooper's charming Rural Hours, embellished by twenty finely-colored drawings of birds and flowers; The Picturesque Souvenir, or Letters of a Traveler in Europe and America, by Bryant, embellished by a series of finely-executed engravings; and The Alhambra, by Washington Irving, with designs by Darley, uniform with the splendid series of Mr. Irving's Illustrated Works, some time in course of publication. We have also seen a specimen copy of a superbly illustrated edition of The Pilgrim's Progress, printed on cream-colored paper, as smooth as ivory; and the exquisite designs by Harvey, nearly three hundred in number, are among the most effective ever attempted for the elucidation of this first of all allegories. Professor Sweetser's new work, Menial Hygiene, or an Examination of the Intellect and Passions, designed to illustrate their Influence on Health and the Duration of Life, will be published in the course of the present month. Professor Church's Treatise on Integral and Differential Calculus, a revised edition; The Companion, or After Dinner Table Talk, by Chelwood Evelyn, with a fine portrait of Sydney Smith; The History of Propellers, and Steam Navigation, illustrated by engravings: a manual, said to combine much valuable information on the subjects, derived from the most authentic sources, by Mr. Robert MacFarlane, editor of the Scientific American; and Mr. Ridner's Artist's Chromatic Hand-Book, or Manual of Colors, will also be speedily issued by the same publisher. Mr. Putnam's own production, The World's Progress, or Dictionary of Dates, containing a comprehensive manual of reference in facts, or epitome of historical and general statistical knowledge, with a corrected chronology, &c., is expected to appear in a few weeks. Mr. Theodore Irving's Conquest of Florida is also in progress.
It is said that Meyerbeer has already completed a grand opera with the title of L'Africaine, and is now engaged on a comic opera. This is probably nothing more than one of the trumpets which this composer knows so well how to blow beforehand. Meyerbeer is not greater in music than in the art of tickling public expectation and keeping the public aware of his existence.
The Lorgnette has just appeared in a volume.